A different point of view in the world of wine.

June 18, 2008

Despite all of the differences between living in food and wine loving San Francisco, and live music and BBQ loving Austin, there is one place here I feel lucky to have.

Vino Vino is certainly the best wine bar I've ever been to in the US (how pretentious does that sound?) and the fact that it's in my neighborhood is both a blessing (to my love of wine, and my sense of adventure, as well as my taste for raw meat) and a curse (to my liver, and our bank account).

What makes this place great is that, like my friend Nat says, "they don't compromise." What does that mean? Basically, if you don't work in the wine industry, you're likely to walk into this place and not recognize most of the bottles, hell I don't recognize many of them often. Jerry and Jeff select wines that they love, wines that excite them. They take that excitement and pass it along to their customers - if you don't recognize anything, all you gotta do is ask for a recommendation, and you're gonna get something interesting and delicious. (I constantly wonder why restaurants feel like they have to pander to the lowest common denominator, and offer "familiar" wines - as a customer, I want an interesting experience when I got out, not a list of familiar, overpriced, and often unsuitable wines.)

So, the wine... On my birthday, a group of friends and I drained a couple of bottles at Vino Vino. One of many highlights was made by a guy named Fulvio Bressan (why do the Italians have all the cool men's names? Fulvio, come on!) from a grape native to his region Friuli called Verduzzo. Yum. Bressan is part of a collection of thrilling wine-makers in north-eastern Italy, I refer to them as the crazy club - Movia, Edi Simcic, Edi Kante, Radikon, and Gravner. They all make "traditional" wines, but in a world where technology has consumed the production of wines, and in a region where wine traditions have long been very individual, these wines seems almost radical to most modern drinkers.

It's white, but it's meant to be served at red wine temperature (just under room temp), it's rich and intense, but clean and elegant. It's a wine that loves food, and will make just about anything taste better (rabbit?), yet it's intriguing and delicious all on it's own. Find it, drink it, smile.

I work with wine, many people assume that all I do is drink all day. The mundane truth is that my career is like any other, there are days when I want to play hooky, I get frustrated by pointless office politics, from time to time it's incredibly boring. Once in a while I stumble into experiences that I'm truly lucky to have - a phone call, a table covered in bear empty bottles of some of the worlds great wines, interesting people to talk to... That's not only why I love my job, that's what I live for.

So, on a night like this, after some very serious red wines, my friend Greg and I shared a few more bottles, not coincidently all from members of the aforementioned "Crazy Club."The highlight? Edi Simcic Tokata - all I can say is "Damn!" This one is made from Tocai Friulano (or just Friulano), and it comes from the Slovenian side of the Italian border in Friuli. Basically, I could just smell this stuff for hours - the aroma is intoxicating. It's damn tasty too.

The boring part of my job? Selling wine that doesn't thrill me. The best part?

Tasting with the owner of a soon to open restaurant here in Austin, I pulled a sample of one of my favorite wines, from one of my favorite producers, in one of my favorite regions. That's fun and exciting right there (who doesn't prefer working with things that they're passionate about?) That day, I poured Jo Pithon's Savennières for a half dozen buyers of some of the best restaurants in Austin.

It's easy to have a sense of smug self-satisfaction when you work with a wine this amazing, but the best response was the first. The owner of this exciting new restaurant sniffed, swallowed, and gasped "Holy Shit!" I couldn't have put it any better myself. I look forward to saying the same about Olivia's food.

It's from the Loire Valley, it's all Chenin Blanc, Jo Pithon bears a passing resemblance to Andre the Giant, and all his wines are amazing!!!

I'm going to apologize - these wines are all kind of expensive. In an ideal word, spending $40 on a bottle of wine wouldn't seem like an extravagance, but I know that it does to most people. All I can say is that these wines are totally worth every penny.

Get a couple of friends together, split the cost. A bottle of wine gives you five glasses, split the cost and the last glass with three others and it's not so bad. Plus, that's what it's all about anyway, coming together with others, sharing delicious wine, and creating community.

May 11, 2008

Pretty picture, huh? You’ve got your autumnal colors, blue sky and water, a family walking along the shore while deer frolic, and George Washington. This is the “Most Wanted Painting” in the United States. It’s a painting designed to appeal to the broadest group of Americans possible, based on statistical data. What do you think, do you like it?

The short story is that a pair of Russian born artists conducted an opinion poll of what Americans like and don’t like in a painting. They took these results and created both the “Most Wanted Painting,” that you see above, and the “Least Wanted Painting.” The idea here is that “truth is a number.” Similar polling of other countries created a collection of most and least wanted art from around the world (turns out that most people really like blue skies, with the exception of the Dutch – always iconoclasts).

A few years later, these two set to work again, with the help of an American composer, and applied the same methods to popular music. The results are a soulful mid-tempo crooner with vocals about love and catsup, and a twenty-plus minute epic lead by a rapping operatic soprano, complete with banjo, accordion, and bagpipe solos, and plugs for Wal-Mart.This stuff cracks me up. I spent a good chunk of Saturday afternoon laughing my ass off at both “The Most Wanted Song” and “The Most Unwanted Song.”

In 1994 I was exposed to the Fluxus movement at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago – that exhibit instilled me with a love of this type of conceptual art; process driven, contrarian, and above all satirical of the way the mainstream views and consumes art. In other words, this stuff is funny, because they’re saying what we’re all thinking – whether “we” know it or not.

From an early age I’ve been attracted to stuff outside of the “norm” – be it music, books, people, or of course wine. I’m not really that different or unique, the age of the WWW has shown us all that there are groups of people out there into anything if you look hard enough. As more and more people start drinking wine, there are more and more people who want something outside of the mainstream, something other than the lowest common denominator – wines meant to get high scores and offend the fewest people. It’s the internet age! We don’t have to look for one “truth.” Folks are reaching out and finding information on Tibetan Yak cheese, or 1960’s Go-Go music from Thailand, why not interesting wines?

I’ve never really felt, nor wanted to be, part of the mainstream. But I’m not the only person in the world who prefers to drink high acid wine. There are lots of people out there who want their wine to “tell them a story” about where it comes from. So here I am now writing my goofy thoughts about wine and culture.

“Numbers are innocent.” An idea that I can’t really argue with, but the desire for some sort of empirical, objective truth tends to give numbers more power than they deserve. By creating art that is statistically supposed to appeal to the majority of people, what we get is something so banal and ridiculous that it’s comical. It stops being funny when you realize that this process is being applied to wine – without any sense of irony.

Wine ratings aren’t evil, in fact they’re basically meaningless – an attempt to create some frame of comparison. Robert Parker isn’t the bad guy, he’s a savvy wine lover (albeit a terrible writer) who found himself in the right place at the right time. The problem lies in the fact that most people don’t understand all of the florid tasting notes that wine writers churn out like carbon dioxide, so the numbers are all that’s left to make any sense of. Wine is confusing, describing taste is nebulous at best. If someone like Parker positions himself as a “consumer advocate,” people are going to look for some kernel of truth in what he has to say. Adjectives are subjective, “truth is a number."

Honestly, I actually like “The Most Unwanted Song” a hell of a lot more. While it is obviously ridiculous, it’s got a lot of elements that I really like in music. And truthfully, the wines I love the most tend to get meager scores in wine publications. I’m not afraid to admit these things, and I hope that if you’re reading this you won’t be either.

Everyone's homework is to go out and buy this book! Ask your local bookseller, specialty food store, wine shop to stock it. Buy spare copies and leave them conspicuously at your favorite local restaurants. Get the word out.

March 11, 2008

Three thoughts;1) Wine is food.2) Wine is culture3) Wine makes community

The first is an old idea, fully realized while working at a wine shop in Oakland. (Life is funny, the work experience that I am most proud of is the one few people here in TX know anything about.) Basically, the idea is that wine is produced from an agricultural product and made by artisans and craftsmen with the intention of being served with a meal. It’s not an accompaniment to food, it’s part of the food itself – good wine makes food taste better, and good food makes wine taste better. I try not to be a hater on this blog, so I’ll just say that wine with good acidity, moderate alcohol, and little or no flavors of wood tend to be the best to serve with food – we like foods that have acidity, alcohol kills your taste buds, and few of us out there actually eat wood.

I keep harping about the second idea. Music, art, books, comics, film, fine meals, clothes; all of these things are made by people who care about what they do, and are driven to create. Wine is no different. All of these things have both a mainstream that creates a “brand” for mass consumption (often on a tremendous scale) as well as a smaller set of individuals that create their product out of an interest in that product. There are pop musicians who simply want to sell records, there are folks who make music because they love music. Some are conceptual and idea oriented, others are more visceral and emotive. The world of wine has the same diversity, the same gulf between big brands and small producers, the same differences in inspiration and execution. (You don’t buy your music at the mall, you shouldn’t buy your wine at the grocery store.)

The last is obviously more nebulous. It’s a new idea for me, so I probably haven’t completely cemented what I mean. Obviously the idea of community is a pretty hard concept to define. All I know is that sharing wine and a meal with friends makes them closertofamily, with family makes them more like friends, and with strangers makes them more familiar. Many of us want to build a sense of community with our neighbors, with our peers, with the folks out there (both IRL and online) that love the same things we love – sharing and exploring wine helps. Searching for wine made with honesty, that reflects where it comes from – that’s creating community.

This is the stuff I think about. I encourage everyone out there to think about it too. Have some wine with your dinner, ask your local shop for wine made by a small producer, share a glass with others - it's really pretty simple, and feels good too.

March 01, 2008

It’s Saturday night, and Wade & I are living our normal party animal lifestyle. He’s watching HGTV, and I’m reading about wine on the web. It’s actually quite nice, a mellow end to a day spent working on our house, and attending Staple.

Wanna be like us? Here’s how:

Salad Lyonaise (pantry version)- Baby Spinach- 4 slices of bacon- handful of croutons- mild vinaigrette- 2 eggsFry the bacon in a pan, then cut up into chunks. Toss the spinach, croutons, and bacon in the vinaigrette, and spli it between two plates. Either poach the eggs, or fry them over-easy, then put the egg on top of the salad.

After dinner, while finishing the bottle of wine (if there’s two of you, how hard is that?) check out the following places on the world wide web:

More than Organic – la Crémerie is one of the best places in Paris to drink wine, eat cheese, and generally live life to it’s fullest. This site, developed by one of the founders of la Crémerie, provides a great overview of what natural wine is all about, and references some of the figures of the Vin Naturel “movement” in France. There’s also info on the authors new spot Racines (god I want to go to Paris!)

SF Joe’s Loire Valley tasting reports on Wine Therapy, parts 1 & 2 – For the last two years, I was lucky enough to visit the Salon des Vins de la Loire with l’Equipe Dressner. Even though two trips does not a routine make, I felt a little blue that I wasn’t there with the team this year. SF Joe is a regular on the trip – a trained chemist and securities broker who lives in New York (but spends much time in SF), Joe is one of the most knowledgeable person I’ve ever had the opportunity to drink wine with. His descriptions of what he tasted in early February are amazing, they’re gonna make you want to drink all sorts of great wine.

Now I’m just obsessed. If you like Stereolab, Electrelane, Tortoise, Radiohead, or anything a little bent and groovin’ this is a musical scene you should check out. The Prog Archives obviously cover a lot of other types of music, I’m sticking with the Krautrock and Post-Rock/Math-Rock sections for now…

Well, the bottle’s empty, and House Hunters is on, so I’ll leave you all to check this stuff out until my next post.

I'm going to read comics. For some reason, putting all of the links into this post makes me wish I had two different colored eyes.

February 21, 2008

A few weeks ago, I attended my first meeting of a local tasting group that I’ve helped set up with a co-worker. I met a bunch of interesting new people, and tasted a bunch of great wine, but that wasn’t what struck me. I’m new to town, so obviously I’m trying to meet people, make new friends, and see how I fit into the scene. I came away from that event mostly impressed at how young the crowd is (I felt old at 34), how fashionably dressed, what good taste in music they had.

Yesterday I was in a work meeting; the conversation was light-hearted, comfortable and familiar. The subject turned to the temporal nature of marriage. I’ve been in a relationship for fourteen years, I know all about this – sometimes you are totally in sync with your partner, and sometimes you’re just not getting along, those rough spots usually work themselves out with a little time. I didn’t add anything to the conversation though. It’s a cliché to point out that a gay guy has to come out to the people around him. I’m in a town and an industry that is not particularly adverse to same-sexuals – it’s just a matter of how to fit it in to the conversation.

Last week Wade and I celebrated Valentines Day. He made me a terrific meal (I cooked for him the night before, and well, I did move across country for him). We had pan seared quail, and rice pilaf, with a nice green salad and some cheese. I opened a bottle of 1996 Joël Taluau St Nicolas de Bourgeuil. It was fantastic! Mellow and earthy with age, dark in color yet light in weight – delicious with the quail. This is a wine that folks around here aren’t familiar with. The wines of the Loire are little know in Texas, and outside of most folks area of knowledge. It’s unclear at this point how the wines I love fit in here.

The point of all of this is that wine is just like all of the things that we love or just find important in our lives. When me meet new people or are in new situations, we’re looking for touchstones of familiarity. Does the guy sitting across the table from me like the same movies as I do? Is the music they’re playing at this party what I like to listen to? Can my coworkers relate to my family and my friends? We’re constantly trying to see how things fit together.

Just like all of these other areas of life, wine is not a “one size fits all” quantity. We all have our own tastes and experiences. We all use wine in different ways. The idea is not that wine is a product meant simply to be consumed; rather wine is a part of our lives, our communities, our culture. Just like great music, or an honest meal can bring people together, real wine can too. Just as we relate to our friends and families, we can relate wine.

February 13, 2008

It’s been over 5 months. I arrived on August 21, and lived in someone else’s house until February 4. In that time take all of the problems of living with roommates, having your stuff in storage, and living out in the country, and add them all up to get something that wasn’t exactly hell, but more a sort of purgatory – living like a tourist in one’s own life.

Wade and I both love to cook. Ironically, we kind of got out of the habit living in San Francisco for the last two years. Finally having our own kitchen, our own dutch oven, our own knives, etc, we’re eating at home every chance we get. The goal is to make chez nous the best restaurant in Austin, and while there’re a bunch of great places to eat here in the capitol, I think we’ve making a pretty good showing.

The best burger in the world, for two: ¾ lb American Wagyu ground beef 2 fresh whole wheat buns 2 slices thick cut bacon some Blue Chevre (from Pure Luck dairy if possible) some baby spinach a few slices of heirloom tomato thinly sliced red onion mayonnaiseThe meat is cooked in a cast iron skillet, as hot as possible. The buns are toasted, spread with mayo, layered with spinach, and the hot burgers rest on top for a few minutes to wilt the greens and melt the dressing.

So, after a busy day of unpacking and moving around boxes, Wade treats me to this meal – really, it was the best burger I’ve ever had, better than Zuni, Cisco, you name it. After unpacking our wine collection, I decided that we should drink well – after all we deserve it, right? So, I open a bottle of 1996 Edmunds St John les Côtes Sauvages.

This was a wine that was intended to be something of a simple bottle. I retailed well under $20 when it was released, and was Steve Edmunds take on a simple Côtes du Rhone. This is not a wine that one would usually think about holding for 11+ years. I’m glad I did.

Making this bottle more significant is the fact that 1996 was the last vintage that this wine was produced. Some of the old Mourvedre vines were ripped out by a new owner. The label clearly states "Fin de Siècle" - end of an era. Fitting since this meal felt like the beginning of a new era for us. We moved to San Francisco in 1996, I volunteered for Steve Edmunds and Cornelia St John during there holiday tastings for 6 or so of the 11 years we lived in CA. This bottle was given to me by Steve - drinking it to celebrate what we left behind and what we have to look forward to was really special.

The burger tasted of charred meat and tangy cheese, with a subtle hint of smokey bacon. On it’s own, the wine tasted of black licorice (specifically reminded me of these Italian pastilles that my friend and former co-worker Joel loved), with food the meaty elements of the wine really shined. There’s a good chunk of Mourvedre in the blend here, and there’s a really gamey aspect that I attribute to that. The marriage of the two was heavenly – delicious food made with love, and a fantastic bottle of wine, made to be drunk.

I’m enjoying a second glass of Dogfish Head Brewery’s Fort as I write this. We’ll undoubtedly end the evening with a few scoops of Brazos Supreme ice cream (Chocolate Surprise). Things in Texas are good.

November 23, 2007

For those that didn't see the whole episode, Jack Black's character Milo opens up a new comic shop across the street from the Android's Dungeon - to the delight of the kids and chagrin of Comic Book Guy. It's funny because it's true - I know these people, including Milo's girlfriend Strawberry ("my purse is a lunch-box").

Austin is full of this type - the crafty girl who can knit a stratocaster, the hipster nerd in a pork-pie hat, and of course the incredible comic shop.

It's funny, because all of those people live in San Francisco too. When I compare the differences, I get a lot of perspective on the nature of cities. I never gave much thought to the importance of industry in San Francisco - of course the dot.com boom and bust affected how much money people spent on food and wine, and yes the silicon valley folks kept the last shop I worked in busy. What I took for granted was the fact that the food and wine business is an important industry in the Bay Area - a redundant thing to point out, but I didn't have a clear picture of what that means until I left.

In Austin, it's live music. In the "live music capitol of the world," you can see some-one performing some type of old-timey music, blues-rock, or country in any number of places, every night of the week. That's what people here do. There are good restaurants for sure, and you can even get a good glass of wine in the right places, but it's not the focus.

I came up in an atmosphere where food and wine was everything. When I first moved to San Francisco in 1996, everyone I met was either an aspiring chef or DJ - often both. Friends would have parties where we'd eat fancy cheese and listen to hip-hop or drum & bass. It was great. I've been lucky to have spent the last 9 years or so working with wine, but also meeting interesting people and talking to them about food, wine, music, you name it.

Of course I'm feeling nostalgic. I'm new to Austin (fact of the matter is, I'm not even in Austin yet), and I haven't met people who are interested in the things that I am. I'm just not used to it - it's odd for me that I still work in the wine business, but can go weeks without having a conversation with my peers and co-workers about wine. Just the same, I have no regrets.

I just miss being a geek. Comics, music, books, wine - all things that I can geek out about. That's not gonna change no matter where I live, and hopefully I can bring a few people along for the ride with me.

To that end, here's what I drank for Turkey day:

Fleury Champagne - gotta have champagne, right?

2002 Rozak Chardonnay Santa Rita Hills Rozak Ranch Vineyard - I can't really explain why I had this in my collection, other than I recall liking it a few years ago.

2001 Gysler Riesling Kabinett Weinheimer Holle - one of the first 2001's I've opened. It was a really good vintage, and this was a delicious wine. Fortunately I have another bottle

2005 Domaine de la Pépière Cepage Côt - I think that if you search this blog for mentions of this wine, it might be embarassing.

September 09, 2007

I title this post - my first after quite an extended absence - in part because of the New Order songs that's burbling through my headphones as I write this, but also because it's appropriate for my current living situation and what's on my mind as a result.

So... I haven't posted in far too long because I've moved from the Bay Area (my home for more than eleven years) to Texas. When asked, it's easiest to say that I've moved to Austin, but for the time being the truth is that I find myself in the hill country south of Austin outside of my other half's home town of Wimberley. Here I am in the village.

Wimberley's a funny place. I imagine that most people have an image in their mind when I mention living in "rural" Texas, but Wimberley's got fancy restaurants, a cafe shop that sells Hawaiian coffee, and a handful of wineries within spittin' distance. Basically, it's an old ranch town that was originally co-opted by agrarian hippies, and is now being bought out by wealthy retirees from the big city.

Wealthy retirees have a weird thing for wine. I don't mean that they like wine or know anything about it (certainly many do, but that has nothing to do with their being wealthy retirees), but more there's this idea amongst folks with some expendable income and free time that owning a winery is the perfect pass-time that combines agrarian gentility and urban sophistication. As a result, there are wineries springing up all over the Texas hill country - as well as just about every state in the union.

I think it's funny, because historically in Europe folks planted grapes where they couldn't really grow much else, and most wine was produced for the consumption of locals. Nowadays, wineries are becoming status symbols.

I don't want to make any statements about the quality of Texas wine - it's an infant wine region, and has the potential to really do something interesting (the soil here is certainly far more suited to growing fine wine than California, if not the climate). I've even referred to Dickson wine in an earlier post (he's a wealthy lawyer from Houston...)

What's cool is that folks out here in the country are drinking wine. There can't be anything wrong with that.

So maybe people in Wimberley don't know about the wines of Huet (yet), but at least I can get a glass of wine with dinner. Things here aren't as backward as my friends in CA want to think.